Soren Kierkegaard

Rørdam, who in addition to his sons Peter and Hans had left three comely
and marriageable daughters, Elisabeth, Emma, and Bolette. So for a young
man, this was not a bad place to pay a visit. That day in May the family also
had another caller, a fourteen-year-old friend, Regine by name, who later
recalled how Søren Aabye had suddenly turned up and made “a very strong
impression,” by speakin g“unceasin gly”—indeed, “his speech practically
poured forth and was highly captivating.”
The visit also made an impression on Kierkegaard, but of a quite different
sort, and the evenin gof that same day he wrote in his journal: “A gain today
(May 8) I tried to forget myself, though not with noise and commotion—
that surrogate does no good—but by walking out to Rørdams and talking
with Bolette and (if possible) leavin gat home the devil of wit, that an gel
with the flamin gsword who stations himself—as I deserve—between me
and every innocent girl’s heart. Then you overtook me—thank you, God,
for not lettin gme immediately go mad; never have I had so much anxiety
about going mad. Thank you for again inclining your ear to hear me.”
Kierkegaard subsequently deleted the words “to Rørdams and talking with
Bolette,” which, however, H. P. Barfod nowhere tells us in his edition, so
when Regine read these desperate lines in 1869 she believed that they ex-
pressed Kierkegaard’s first fascination withher. But in this, Regine was mis-
taken. The goal of Kierkegaard’s walk to Frederiksberg was in fact the youn-
gest daughter of the house, twenty-two-year-old Bolette, “a very pretty
and sensible girl,” as Kierkegaard’s brother Peter called her in a letter of
February 23, 1836. Much later Kierkegaard also admitted that he and Bo-
lette had made an “impression” on one another, which was why he felt a
certain “responsibility” for her “albeit in all innocence and purely intellec-
tually,” as he wrote in retrospect in 1849. An undated journal entry from
1837 makes it clear, however, that the fascination and the conflictin gfeel-
ings associated with the girl from Frederiksberg persisted for quite some
time: “The same scene again today. Nonetheless I did get out to the
Rørdams. Dear God, why should this tendency awaken just now? Oh, how
I feel that I am alone—Oh, a curse upon that proud satisfaction in standing
alone—Everyone will have contempt for me now—Oh, but you, my God,
take not your hand from me, let me live and better my ways.”
This was a journal entry that Kierkegaard did not want posterity to know
about, so he attempted to make it illegible by repeatedly crossing it out.
The next time the name Rørdam figures in his journal is on Sunday, July 9,
1837, when on the way back to town Kierkegaard stopped in Frederiksberg
Gardens and with an allegorical, almost prophetic self-understanding jotted
down the following: “I am standing like a solitary spruce, egoistically self-
enclosed and pointin gtoward what is hi gher, castin gno shadow, and only